In a move that has been met with both confusion and celebration, the University of Otago has officially started the roll out of Aoroa, its shiny new learning management system (LMS), powered by Brightspace. Despite being touted as a modern upgrade, Aoroa has already been critically received by students, some arguing that it’s difficult to navigate and somehow manages to hide your course content better than you ever hid from your 9am lecture.
For freshers: Blackboard was the digital backbone of your degree. It was where you’d binge three months of lectures at 2x speed the night before an exam, where assignments were heroically uploaded to Turnitin at 11:59pm (or 12:01am, if you were feeling chaotic), and where discussion boards went to die. The interface was dated. It was clunky. It occasionally looked like it had been designed during the dial-up internet era. But it was home.
In response to the campus discourse surrounding Blackboard versus Aoroa, Critic Te Ārohi made up one of our classic surveys, urging students and staff to spill their thoughts about the new LMS. As of writing, 143 brave souls have responded. 74.8% of respondents told us that they preferred Blackboard over Aoroa, with just 21% preferring Aoroa. Well, nobody likes change, do they?
The chief complaints? Navigation, navigation, navigation. One student felt that Aoroa’s headings take up “half the fucking screen,” and felt the abundance of tabs and sub-sections “lead to nowhere.” However, feedback is not all bad. Students generally seemed to think that Aoroa’s user interface is far more “attractive” than Blackboard’s. As one glowing review put it: “It’s prettier ig.” For others, the appeal went beyond aesthetics: “I like how clear and concise the organisation is,” one respondent said. “[It] forces lecturers to provide information in more detailed subsections rather than putting everything into one course outline document.” Students also liked being able to see all assignment due dates in one place. Still, for some, a sleek interface isn’t enough. One brutally honest respondent summed their feelings up with the following: “Yeah it looks alright, but if you polish a turd it’s still a turd ffs.” “Darkplace, not Brightspace,” another student added ominously.
When approached about the complaints regarding navigation, Dean of Learning and Teaching Professor told Critic that the University would be “open to making improvements” and understanding what students find difficult about the navigation. “For example, we’ve already implemented some navigation ideas in Aoroa that are a direct response to student feedback on pain points in Blackboard – like having consistent menus within papers for standard information that must be provided in every paper.” Many students in Critic’s survey did appreciate the consistency that Aoroa has. Tim also assured that a feedback survey will also soon appear directly on the Aoroa login page – so even if course content feels impossible to find right now, at least the feedback form won’t be. “We’d also note that Aoroa is brand new to us so the look and feel of the platform navigation is different from Blackboard. This lack of familiarity may go some way to explaining the response of returning students.”
The University chose Aoroa powered by Brightspace after carefully assessing several major LMS products available. Aoroa “best met our requirements and received the most positive feedback from both student and staff testers,” Tim explained. Brightspace also offers great compatibility with plugins, such as Panorama, which increases content accessibility through downloads of alternative document formats in Aoroa. “We’re currently in the process of setting up an ongoing student reference group for Aoroa and wider Digital Learning Environment Programme initiatives like the Aonui student portal,” Tim explained. “This group will be key to gathering student views and providing feedback to the staff working on Aoroa, and they will have input into decisions on the future development of Aoroa.”
Some responses suggested the real issue isn’t Aoroa itself, but the humans piloting it. “My 80 year old lecturer doesn’t know how to use it,” wrote one student. Another is more blunt: “lecturers lowkey are the problem tbh.” Shots fired.
Fortunately, the survey was also open to lecturers and tutors, who were keen to share their thoughts. All lecturers either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that Aoroa was overall a better LMS than Blackboard, appreciating its “tidy” and “uniform appearance”, as well as being “way less admin” to work with than Blackboard. However, uploading and providing access to some documents for students was proving to be difficult – “students are forced to be inside the Aoroa app to access a lot of course info, whereas with Blackboard they could easily download”, one lecturer told us. “It's slow to send announcements, and adding any course materials that aren't PDFs [like spreadsheets of data] is annoying”.
Overall, tutors felt Aoroa was better than Blackboard overall, but not starry-eyed. Most agreed the content tab can “get overwhelming”, with materials quickly vanishing into a maze of dropdowns. Several said organising content has been trickier than expected, and creating offline versions of key documents isn’t exactly seamless.
The question left on everyone's lips is ‘why the change?’ Dean of Learning and Teaching Professor Tim Cooper described the main driver behind Aoroa as an effort to enhance the student learning experience. Long story short, Blackboard is a “legacy product” that hasn’t had any extensive development from its vendor in years – and Aoroa represents the next step forward. “The new functionality we have available in Aoroa has genuine potential to enhance student learning. It is a cutting-edge and contemporary platform.” It has been a long time since the University originally implemented Blackboard and Moodle, and “a lot has changed since then, including the types of platforms available, our expectations about what an LMS needs to do, and what kinds of student learning experiences we want to enable.”
Tim noted that the University learnt a lot through teaching and learning during the Covid pandemic, so they “took some time to consult and do workshops with students and staff to describe what we needed and wanted from an LMS now and in the future. This work gave us a clear set of requirements.” Another reason cited for the switch is the opportunity to implement a single LMS across all papers at Otago – meaning there’s now one system to rule them all. What even is a ‘Moodle'?
When asked whether the University would consider a return to Blackboard, the answer was a resounding no. Blackboard is an old system that is no longer being developed and, by early 2027, will no longer be supported by its vendor. RIP.
The name ‘Aoroa’ is derived from the early whakapapa of Tāwhaki, whose pursuit of knowledge is used to describe the journey of tauira at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. “It also has metaphorical meaning that alludes to the development of long lasting, deep knowledge. We’ll be able to share more about the Kai Tahu story of Tāwhaki and where Aoroa fits in that narrative soon,” Tim assured.
The University maintained that “Aoroa is a fantastic learning management system for our students, and that over time both students and staff will become more comfortable with using it.”
